Hey Dave. I meant to respond to this when I first saw it but then I forgot about it. Sorry about that.
You might not be trying to troll me, but you are wildly off mark and aggrieved sounding.
How did we get to me saying men should take responsibility for and respect their part of the reproductive process to why should men have to abstain from sex indefinitely or be slut shamed and why aren't women being equally slut shamed? Pro tip: women are CONSTANTLY being slut shamed. You have no worries there.
What? Where did I say abstain from sex? I was talking about being mindful of the fact that you might cause a pregnancy and conducting yourself accordingly if you dont want to be responsible for one. I gave examples. Several. None of them were abstain from sex indefinitely, one of them WAS abstinence during ovulation, I think.
Ovulation only lasts up to 24 hours, though the window around that you'll want to careful about is 6 days. That's hardly a life sentence. Further, what you're trying to avoid is vaginally penatrative sex with ejaculation, unprotected. There are other ways to have sex. You know that, right?
As to your second and third points... If you raise a kid and provide for them you're that kid's father. Nobody's coming to graduation or whatever and "taking over". At that point, the kid is grown. If the kid wants to get to know their biological parent, why do YOU have a problem with that? Relationships are built on shares history and mutually caring about each other. Nobody can take that away from you. You're not being usurped.
Lastly, I never said that paternity fraud never happens. My point was, as you also said, that true paternity fraud is rare and I'll refer you back to my comment about legalities and the biological realities of pregnancy. Women are more versed, generally speaking, about reproduction but there's a lot of misinformation out there too and many women (I'm thinking religious cults, etc) are raised very secluded and not given a sexual education. This isn't instinctual knowledge, you have to learn it. It's not fraud if you made an honest mistake.
I'm sorry to hear about your friend. That sucks but I'll refer you back to my original comment again. Why did he not draft a contract for repayment if the baby turned out to not be his? Why did he not require a paternity test? Why did he not act to prevent pregnancy in the first place?
You men are not helpless here. You fall into these situations because you allow them to happen.
And just so we're super clear, I have about the same amount of sympathy for women who knowingly date a married man and maybe allow themselves to get pregnant because he promised her leave her and then whine and cry about it. No. You got took because you didn't take care of yourself and your interests. You put what should be your responsibility into the hands of someone else so you could be flippant about your own life and now you want to cry about how they did you wrong.
It's the same damn thing. It is not a woman's responsibility to practice birth control on YOUR behalf. It's her responsibility to practice birth control on HER behalf, and yes, you benefit from that. But we all know birth control is not 100% effective and things happen. YOU are responsible for your own birth control and sexual health.
